Losing Myself - Will Young

I am loving this vid:

A Bit of Fluff

A couple of months ago, my editor at Torquere suggested I write a bit of bonus material for Just Perfect. Something from Cody's point of view that showed what he might see in Draven. At first I had reservations, but when I started, I felt...good. So good that the piece came out 300 words over word count.

It reminded me how much I really do love the sweet and fluffy stories. I've been in a dark place lately and I think my stories have been reflecting that (in really fun and twisty ways), but this tiny little excerpt made me smile. The combination of my editor's suggestion and the card my friend sent me a while back is probably what got me going on One Good Year. It's funny how events sometimes come together in odd and perfect ways.

Not that I have any plans to abandon my twisty stories. ;)

We had to cut the word count down to 500 before posting it on the Torquere social group, but I got permission to post the original version on my site. You can read it here.

I hope you like it.

Dude, here’s my sequel.

If you’ve been following my stuff a while, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve got a bit of a…hang up when it comes to sequels. In that I don’t have any. The recent release of Just Perfect is a prequel to a dark little story I wrote a while back called Just Wait, but Just Wait’s been out of print since 2007, so does Just Perfect even count as a prequel? I labeled it #1 in the Drayner series so I’m guessing not.

But now, finally, I have a bonafide Book Two. It seems right that it’s part of the One Good series, since that's what I was working on when I angsted about sequels in Dude, where’s your sequel? Of course, it’s also kind of ironic (or maybe just sad—I don’t have a good grasp of irony) that back then I was working on One Good Verse.

Turns out, Book Two in the One Good series will not be One Good Verse.

It’s called One Good Year and it’s an Ace & Spade story. XD

The novella’s tentatively scheduled to release March 13th, 2012 from Loose Id. You can read a little more about it here.

I’m excited. Are you exited?

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Note: While hidden, the new One Good series pages have been available to view for newsletter members since this past Sunday. One of the perks of being on that list is getting to peek at stuff a few days (if I'm on top of my game) before it goes live. They'll be getting another sneak peek this Sunday, so if you'd like to join the list, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rowan_mcbride/. It's newsletter-only and very low traffic, plus you can decide if you want to have all posts delivered to your inbox, or just the ones that include chapter/installment/story announcements by choosing the "special notice" option. Special notices do not include sneak peeks unless I've just posted a new installment to one of my serials.

Wow, that was a very long post script.

But I'm still excited. Are you still excited? :D

Goals: I haz them.

I didn’t write a New Year’s resolution post because I didn’t feel like I’d achieved much in 2010/2011. I sorta figured I was hella lucky to have a novella out in 2012 and shouldn’t push that luck. Plus I go through this thing periodically where I feel like I suck.

Then an old friend sent me a card. Inside, she had cut and pasted (as in actually cut and pasted, with paper and scissors and—I assume—paste) a dozen little quotes and images that reminded her of me. It made me laugh. It totally made me feel like I didn’t suck.

So I got back to writing, and my short little bonus fic turned into another novella. Sold novella to publisher. Rocked out to The Offspring in my living room. Realized it was only January and that this could get interesting.

Below are a list of my goals for 2012. I’m going to do my best to achieve them. I’m not going to beat myself up over it if I don’t. I'm also going to be flexible and open to change.

I think it’s going to be a good year.

• Updates to the website


• I didn’t put up any additions to Best of Rowan’s Ramblings for 2011, and there were some pretty good ones. (Check: 2-16-11)


• I’m thinking of doing a bit of a redesign to the overall look and navigation to the site. For a while there I never had more than three published books out at a time, but I’m up to seven now so I think it’s fair to say that the trend is good and over. My book list is starting to look a little unruly.


• I’d also like to make the place more mobile friendly. As is, it doesn’t look too bad on phones because the original design took into account smaller laptop/monitor screens, but a mobile option could make things cleaner and easier to navigate on a phone.



• Updates to Stories


• This is the year I finish The Jascian’s Toy. I can feel it.


• Write One Good Verse, which will bring the One Good series to three. I do like that number. Plus I’ve been working on it forever and I’m really digging the world right now.


• Maybe Touching Fire: Asher's Magic. Asher Croft is so very hot and his story should be a lot of fun.


• If things go well with Drayner series, #1: Just Perfect, maybe I’ll get the green light on #2: Just Wait, the rough of which is already done.


• Get Want Me into e-book format. XD



• Conventions


• DragonCon, if any. I ditch it for something else this year there's a certain group of friends who will probably murder me in my sleep.



• Blogging


• I’m going to try and get into a regular schedule. Maybe {gasp} write a few posts ahead of time, so I can have them set to upload automatically. Most likely Thursdays. Of course, all bets are off if I’m on a roll with the story section above.


• Post parts 2 and 3 of my 2011 YaoiCon wrap-up before YaoiCon 2012. *headdesk*

I think that’s the plan. There’s some tweaks I want to make to my own attitude, which brings us to one of the quotes my friend sent me:

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
--Marilyn Monroe

There was a time when I wrote fearlessly, when—no matter how crazy the idea—I would take what came to me and run with it. Didn’t matter whether it was thirty-five foot giant alien teenagers kidnapping humans to be their toys, or hell-bent roommates sucking the life out of the objects of their desire. They were the stories inside me, and I had every confidence I could tell them.

That’s the big goal. The one I’m going to work hardest on. I want to write madly, brilliantly, ridiculously. I want to be the person in that carefully crafted card.

And I want to have a blast doing it.

It's simple math, really.

Sometimes I storyboard. I take a pack of index cards, write down all the scenes that are jumbled together in my mind (one scene per card), and lay them out on the carpet. This way, I can see if the storyline and character arc makes sense. I like storyboarding more than outlining because I feel as if I have more leeway to add scenes, delete scenes, and shuffle stuff around (this advantage, of course, is all in my head because cut & paste lets me do all of that on the computer). It's a way of getting organized that works for me.

Below is one of the cards from a novella I just finished:



Recognize those names? ;)

On heroes, villains, and what I can get away with.

A while back I got a rejection letter (I know, shocker, right?). It was nice as far as rejection letters go. Said my writing skills were tight. The story itself was too dark, though. I know this because the word ‘dark’ was used five times in two paragraphs.

It made me realize that I’m not so good at telling my heroes from my antiheroes from my villains, and that this could actually be a problem.

Sometimes I don’t cross a line by much and an editor will tell me how to revise. In the original manuscript of One Shot, Riley was much scarier than he is in the published version. When I made him nicer I made the mistake of not toughening up Nick by a proportional amount, but Nick’s still a little hottie in my book so that’s okay.

Walker Cain from Want Me, however, didn't get dialed down at all. For good or ill, it was one of the reasons I chose to self-publish. It meant I could go crazy with the storyline. I got to write a character who literally had no concept of right and wrong, not even as other people saw it. He wanted. He took. That was his life. Unfortunately what he wanted most was Joel, and the spiral they were thrown into as a result turned out to be razor sharp and painful for both of them.

Ahh, how I loved that book.

Still, there was an element of likability to Walker. Partly because he just didn't know any better. Innocence born from madness.

Draven Donnor is not mad. He knows exactly what he's doing. And he knows that almost everything he does is not right by human standards. So that would make him a villain, yeah? Except that he's not human. He has a moral code, but it's a product of who he is, of a culture very different than ours. And when it comes to Cody, he's all about loving, he's all about protecting, he's all about getting closer. So he's got flaws, but he also has one really, really good trait. Maybe that makes him an antihero. But…

When he becomes an assassin, he finds that he enjoys his job. That never changes. No angst. No crisis of conscience. Plus at the beginning of the story he steals from Cody. His best friend. Which brings us back into villain territory. On the other hand, from his perspective he is a natural, right being, rightly doing what comes naturally to him. Then again, most villains think the same thing about themselves, meaning Antihero Upgrade denied.

As you can see, I’m not entirely certain how I should feel about my newest character. But I feel for him all the same. He is Draven and I love him. Just like I love Walker. Just like all those psychotic characters I adore so much in anime. (I’m looking at you, Akabane.)

This says something serious about my psyche. I've yet to figure out what, exactly. As the writer of such stories, am I the hero or the villain? Maybe I’m trying to write the best story possible with a concept that’s always intrigued me, and maybe I hope Just Perfect catches on and its popularity will let me write more of it. Some of the stories I'd like to tell are cool and dark and possibly twisted. And I believe they belong on the shelf right next to my fluffy stories, because I love fluffy too.

Perhaps my ultimate goal is to bring balance to my backlist. That’s a worthy aspiration, even if the road is five times as dark.

Does that mean I'm the antihero?

Or am I just a writer with wicked thoughts, trying to see what xe can get away with?

Just Perfect Release Day

My new novella, Drayner Series #1 - Just Perfect, is officially available from Torquere Press.

I hope you like it. ;)

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Blurb:

Three years ago, Draven was forced to leave behind his human best friend to become a Drayner Assassin. Cody knew nothing of Draven's ability to steal a person's physical attributes by touch, and the Drayner intends to keep it that way when he returns to Maryland. Remembering the innocent, flawless human he left behind, he looks forward to rekindling his relationship with his friend.

He's taken aback to find Cody a different man, and Draven is stunned by his own attraction to a harder, more brilliant kind of perfection. But getting close to the human is not easy—Draven has more secrets than ever. Like that day, all those years ago…

When he used his magic to steal from Cody.